The common belief that people with autism look at people’s mouths instead of their eyes is inaccurate and has little evidence, say Nouchine Hadjikhani and Quentin Guillon.
 

A small study published 3 April in Molecular Autism has found that 98 percent of mothers of children with autism have unusual responses to sensory stimuli, including light, sound and touch.
 

Thought until recently to only coordinate motor skills, the cerebellum is involved in diverse cognitive functions such as language and social interaction, and may play a role in autism, says Emanuel DiCicco-Bloom.

Electrical signals generated by dendrites, the branches of neurons that receive information from neighboring cells, may help neurons tune their responses to stimuli, according to a study published 7 November in Nature.

A lightweight eye-tracking system allows researchers to record the shifts in gaze that naturally occur during playtime, reports a study published 20 November in Frontiers in Psychology.

When exposed to irritating noises or images, children with autism show hypersensitivity in brain regions that process sensory information and emotions, according to a study published in November in the Journal of the American Academy of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry.

The more traits of autism an individual has, the more sensory problems he or she reports, according to a study in the general population published 5 December in the Journal of Autism and Developmental Disorders.

Three studies published over the past two months have found significant evidence that children and adolescents with autism have brains that are overly connected compared with the brains of controls. The findings complicate the theory that autism is fundamentally characterized by weakly connected brain regions.

Babies later diagnosed with autism tend to stare at objects after picking them up at much later ages than controls do, according to a study published in Behavioral Brain Research.

Regions of the brain that process vision and control movements are poorly connected in children with autism, according to results presented Saturday at the 2013 Society for Neuroscience annual meeting in San Diego.